


Civilized Indecency

by Alona



Category: Fly By Night Series - Frances Hardinge
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mosca and a less than willing Clent dabble in law; hijinks predictably ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Civilized Indecency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



They were delighted to have her, which should have been Mosca’s first warning. Under the circumstances, relief edged out paranoia. She wasn’t going to be thrown in prison for trespassing or spying or whatever they thought she'd been up to. In fact, it looked not unlikely that she was going to get a job. 

“This’ll be your office,” said the dry-faced official who had drawn the short straw and ended up as her guide. 

“My office,” Mosca echoed, taking it in. 

More properly, it was a closet. An oak-paneled closet, perhaps five paces to a side, most of it taken up by a very large wooden desk on which a complicated assortment of cabinets and drawers was mounted. To one side was a window, tall and narrow and arched at the top, set back a foot into the wall. 

“And here’s the door to the law library.” The official squeezed past Mosca into the office and pushed open a segment of paneling on the wall opposite the window. “You can bring as many books as you like in here, but you can’t take them out the room. You’ll have to make do with notes. I’ll have paper and pens brought around. Judge Walden should probably still be here, you might want to stop by his courtroom and make nice.”

His tone was not reassuring, and Mosca was not one to miss a second cue. “What’s the matter with this judge?” she asked suspiciously. 

The official frowned, looking even dryer. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d been here long enough for the rumors to reach you, but I assure you that while Judge Walden is reserved, and, let’s face it, perhaps somewhat eccentric, there is nothing wrong with him. His legal acumen is unimpeachable, and he is well-respected among his brethren.” 

“Thanks. Very reassuring, that is.” 

If he suspected her of sarcasm, it didn't bother him. He left her there with a brief nod, and Mosca set to rifling through the drawers and cabinets. Empty, and recently dusted. A bit of poking turned up a hidden drawer and no less than three false bottoms. Wouldn't have thought clerks needed hiding places, she thought distantly, before making her way towards the true prize: the library. Earlier she had had a glimpse of it, but the circumstances hadn't been conducive to a thorough study. 

She pushed through the door panel and found herself on a balcony overlooking the library's central well. It was not a large library, and part of the effort to conserve space was putting bookshelves on the backs of door. She eyed the rest of the balcony, which wrapped all the way around the room, wondering how many of the bookcases represented another clerk's office. A skylight not far above her head shed musty light upon row upon row of bookcases. People moved along the shelves or sat in study carrels along the sides. It occurred to Mosca, now that she had the time to think, that she didn't know the first thing about law libraries, and that no one had said anything about a catalogue. Still, they were books, and she was allowed to take as many of them as she wanted. That counted for something. 

She went back through the office and out into the corridor, in search of Judge Walden's courtroom. 

Spectators were filing out when she found it. Mosca waited for the gush to thin to a trickle, then slipped in. At the end with the judge's bench, a prisoner was being dragged out in chains and tears, the latter mostly belonging to a pair of children to whom he was dribbling weak consolations. The Judge, or at least, a judge, from his wig and robe, had turned away from the spectacle in favor of glancing down a list. Mosca scuttled up to him, avoiding the clearly condemned man.

"'scuse me, Judge Walden?"

Judge Walden looked down at her, but not very far down. He was a short man, quite round under his robe, with a near-sighted gaze. In a quavery voice, he said, "Can I help you, little girl?"

"I'm your new clerk, your judgeship, reportin' for duty." Mosca had intended to go for a winning smile at this point, but the situation seemed to call for a look of steely competence instead, which she was less solid on but essayed valiantly. 

“Oh. Well.” He frowned and looked her up and down with his bleary eyes. “You’re a little short, aren’t you? Still, it’s about time they replaced Shreve, the illiterate cur. Tell me you can read?”

“Of course I can read,” said Mosca, “that’s why I got the job. Now, what d’you want me to do?”

“They’ve given you an office, have they? Good, good,” he went on, though Mosca hadn’t said anything. “Here, let’s see what’s coming up.” He reached into a black bag sitting on the chair beside him and took out a thick black notebook, stuffed full of slips of paper covered in miniscule handwriting. The judge opened to one page and pointed out three entries. “I hear cases twice a week. Next time is three days from now. You can start by writing these up for me. The full case files will be in the Hall of Records.”

He stopped abruptly and took off his wig and threw it into the black bag. The hair under it was wispy but mostly brown. He shoved the bag off the chair and sat, putting his feet up on the desk. 

After a couple of minutes, Mosca picked up a stray pen from the bench and wrote copied the names of the cases onto the palm of her hand. She looked at the judge, wondering if he intended to dismiss her, but he was staring blankly at the ceiling. Mosca headed off for the Hall of Records.

 

“Eccentric my big toe!” Mosca finished over supper late that evening. “I seen some of the afternoon trials, an’ there’s no doubt about it. He’s off his head, an’ they’ve stuck me with him because no real clerk would take him.”

Eponymous Clent regarded her unsympathetically across the table. “Then you will be pleased to hear that there will be no need for you to continue in his service.”

“How do you mean?”

“Matters have so fallen out that we would be wise to clear out under cover of darkness. Whenever you have finished your meal, in fact.”

“We haven’t even met up with -- “

“Nor will we have a chance to, Madam, as our contact has been arrested. That is why he could not make his rendezvous this morning. If the authorities knew you were waiting on him when you were snatched, things would get sticky for us in a hurry.”

“Why was he arrested?”

Clent waved a hand dismissively. “A small matter of a conspiracy and a dead family.” 

“He murdered them?” It left such a bad taste in her mouth that Mosca put down her fork. “Like I said, I seen the trials, an’ I read up a pile of law books for those cases. This place is -- “

“The jurisprudential capital of the region, and you would do well to remember it.”

“But it’s all wrong, Mr. Clent. You don’t need any kind of proof to hang someone, not really, an’ the police can do whatever they want, an’ there’s all kinds of law babble that comes out to mean if you’re in prison you’ve prob’ly done somethin’ to earn it, so they may as well hang you as not.” 

Clent heaved a sigh. “We must do something about these disruptive tendencies of yours, Mosca. Oh, yes, they are endearing on a certain level, but that hardly balances the inconvenience, not to mention mortal peril, your revolutionary little heart brings upon us with stunning regularity. Can we, just this once, drop it?”

“We’re stayin’,” Mosca said in a tone of unmistakeable and chilly finality. “I’ll find out all about this murderin’ our contact’s meant to have done, an’ if I don’t like the smell of it, we’re going to do somethin’ about it. All right?”

“If you could elaborate on the something you expect to be done?”

“Well, what he’s really going to need is a lawyer. An’ all you really need for a lawyer, the way I see it, is a way with words an’ the law books. Now, I got the books under control, Mr. Clent, and you...”

“Are you proposing that I pass myself off a man of the law and represent this wretch? A near stranger, perhaps a murderer, certainly a Locksmith asset -- “

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m proposin’. Only if the evidence ‘gainst him looks phony, though. If he’s really a murder, I promise we’ll be out of here faster than cats in a kennel. An’ only think about how much fun you’d have playin’ at bein’ a lawyer. They get to lie all the time an’ get paid for it.”

“Oh, very well. But I am holding your pet abomination hostage unless you can prove the worthiness of the cause. Holding in a metaphorical sense,” he added, meeting the eyes of Saracen, who had raised his head from his makeshift nest in the corner of the room especially to glare. “No need to get your feathers ruffled, good sir. And you, Mosca, had better be quick about your research.”

“Of course, Mr. Clent.” And she even meant it. Law books were fascinating in their own way, but they gave her an ache in her head and somewhere else a little less concrete. As she’d told Clent, it just wasn’t right. 

 

“We can still leave,” said Clent, actually looking a little green around the edges.

Mosca fixed his collar again, unnecessarily, and stepped back to regard her handiwork. Offhand, she said, “Don’t tell me you’re nervous.”

“Am I nervous about the prospect of getting up in front of the chief prosecutor and pretending to be an attorney, which I most certainly am not? Mosca, prosecutors hate counsel for the defense. It is nothing personal, but it is inexorable, which is a singularly uncomfortable circumstance and not at all encouraging when I am about to commit a crime under of the nose of their grand high wizard.” 

“Nervous,” Mosca concluded, and held up a wig for finger-combing. “Just say what I told you to say, only better, an’ no one will know you’re a phony until it’s too late. Remember, once you get Mr. Harcourt off, he’ll tell us what he knows and can leave.”

Softly, Clent asked, “You have no doubts as to his innocence?”

Mosca shoved the wig into his arms in lieu of a response and turned away. They were on the grand steps of the high criminal court, less than an hour before Litwin Harcourt’s trial was set to begin. She had done as little thinking as she could manage about Harcourt’s innocence or guilt, especially once she had uncovered the circumstances of his arrest. Not that I had to look hard to find them, she thought, and that’s the worst bit. The least they could do was have a little shame about it. Any hint of a conscience at all. The problem was that he seemed innocent, and the evidence seemed fabricated, and that when you came down it, Mosca was angry enough at the system that she was willing to fudge on whether he actually was innocent, and knowing that about herself did not sit easily with her. 

“‘course I got doubts,” she said shortly. “It’s time to go in now. Put on that dead weasel and get on with it.” 

Clent eyed the wig, which did look alarmingly weaselly, and put it on. “Good?”

“Little higher on the left, I think,” said Mosca, fingers twitching towards it. 

Clent knelt on the step to let her adjust it, then rose and brushed dirt from the knees of his breeches. Together they walked into the courthouse. 

 

“For what it’s worth, you made a great lawyer.”

“I decline to address you.”

“No, really,” Mosca insisted. “You were tremendous. Too bad it didn’t really matter in the end.” She shivered and waited for a response, but there was only silence from the other side of the coach. She watched the rainy countryside rolling by, trying not to think about her last sight of Linwin Harcourt. 

Clent lasted another mile in silence, then said, “You were wrong about Harcourt.”

“I wasn’t wrong! Just because he was guilty, don’t make me wrong. He still deserved a fair trial...”

“...though once it was over and settled, you had no objections to his being knifed in the gut and left to rot.”

“That’s not true. It was horrible, what they done to him, but he was going to go free, an’ we knew he killed that family. Right?”

“What exactly are you asking me?”

“He deserved to get a fair trial, 'cause everyone does. That’s the point, right? Everyone. Only when you get down to it, punishing the police and them for making trials unfair only helps people if they’ve done the crime. There’s not really anything to do about that, is there?”

“You became quite the legal scholar during our too long extended stay, Mosca. Why not tell me what the solution is?” When she didn’t respond after a while he added, “As far as I can tell, no one has found a way to smooth out that particular little snag. Then again, there are not many legal minds pushing for fair trials. It could put too many of them out of business. If I were you, I would not take it too much to heart.”

"At least Judge Walden said he'd try to change things."

"Yes, he failed to live down to your expectations. A good thing, too, or we might not have got out in the end there."

"Yeah, he's all right." Mosca leaned forward in her seat. "Mr. Clent, do you think he'll do any good? With all that history in the way, I mean, an' everything bein' rigged for the prosecutors."

"I would not care to speculate. But after spending a few weeks in your company, I do believe he is in a good way to giving it an honest go."

"Was that supposed to be a compliment?"

"I am not sure. Better if you do not take it as such. I would not want to contribute to swelling your self-consequence unduly."

"Thanks, Mr. Clent."

Clent seemed momentarily torn between denial and impassivity. Then he smiled. “You are a most troublesome associate, Madam, and you are very welcome.”


End file.
